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The floor plans for the French president's Elysée Palace, the country's interior ministry and the Paris police headquarters were recently stolen from a contractor's car in Paris.

"The plans on a USB drive and discs had been given to a building contractor hired to install fibre optic cabling for video surveillance in the sensitive sites," writes The Telegraph's Henry Samuel. "Thieves made off with the plans after the contractor left them in his vehicle when he briefly parked it at the Gare de Lyon train station in Paris to pick up a friend. Despite their sensitive nature, none of the blueprints were encrypted, making them easy to read or copy by any user."

"A statement from the Interior Ministry admitted that the information included layout plans for the Elysée, the ministry itself and several large companies," The Connexion reports. "Le Parisien, which revealed the theft, said that information on more than 9,000 buildings was included on the memory stick and hard drives. "

"Those plans are now in the hands of thieves, but it is not known whether it was a targeted swipe or an opportunistic crime," writes The Register's Anna Leach. "Still, if the crooks choose to look through the USB drive it won't be too hard for them to find the unencrypted, easily readable plans."